UnsaidSaid
by yahira
Summary: Dan/Blair/Chuck thoughts after the end of the season, with no malice toward any of them. Chair still reunited, Dair friendship on its way back.
1. Blair

Author's note: I don't own anything, and others have already done this better.

She emails him twenty times the night she goes to Chuck. Twenty the next day. Thirty the day after that, and then settles in to a comfortable ten per day for a week. Eventually she moves on to phone calls, leaving a voicemail every week on what had been their regular movie night, back when they were friends.

She misses her best friend. She wants to say that, that he's her best friend. She wants to say thank you for being there for me, thank you for trying, thank you for supporting me. She wants to say he could have supported her by not sending that damn video in right before her wedding, but she'd already accepted his misguided but well-intentioned reasoning. (She wants to say it a little bit anyway.)

She wants to say we would have been happy in Rome, away from it all. She wants to say why did you push, why after all our talk about trust could you not just trust a little longer now that I was finally getting my head on straight, now that you'd helped me feel sane for the first time in what felt like forever?

She wants to say she's sorry she chose Chuck, or not sorry she chose him, but sorry that she couldn't shake him, even after he let go and she had thought she let go. She wants to explain that she thought it was over and she thought she was moving on and she didn't know, she didn't know that both men would tell her to choose right then, and that when they did her heart would hurt at the thought of losing Dan but that it stopped entirely when she thought of relinquishing Chuck.

She wants to say she loves him, even if it's not the kind of love he wants from her. She wants to say please still love me too (just a little less). She wants to say all the break-up cliches and have them be true. She wants to say she wishes it had ended differently, even though she mostly means the part where he got hurt.

She says which movie she's watching that day.

She says she hopes the writers' retreat is going well.

She says maybe I'll catch you next week.

He never calls back.


	2. Dan

Author's Note: Thank you so much to 7gifts and Sapphire1719, who reviewed this, my first Gossip Girl fanfic. I had thought it was a one-shot, but it turned out it wasn't. Who knew?

* * *

Italy is hell.

He is mostly alone. Georgina, having failed at seduction, is off doing things he probably doesn't want to know about, except when he requires her perfect recall of Gossip Girl's secrets. The only other member of their group born within a decade of him is a lesbian separatist poet who had apparently already met Georgina, which gives her enough reason to avoid both of them the entire summer, for which Dan cannot blame her.

Everyone else is at least twenty years older than him, authors whose work he admires greatly. He knows he could learn so much from them during the occasional dinner conversations and the weekly cocktail hours that are really group writing sessions in disguise. He knows this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

But they won't shut up about Claire and Charlie.

They've read Inside of course, they've all read each others work, but aside from a brief discussion with a man whose spare prose reflects quiet Midwestern lives, no one ever wants to talk about the pressures of a constantly observed life, or the corruptive influence of beauty on Sabrina, or how familial expectations almost destroyed Derek, or even how the Upper East Side changed Dylan Hunter and his family.

Nope, it's all about goddamned Claire and Charlie.

Charlie's not discussed as much in literary terms (although 'tragic hero' is tossed around much too often for Dan's liking) but all of America read about the country's youngest billionaire after Bart's supposed death. With his resurrection, the Basses are back in the papers, so there's some natural curiousity. Mostly Dan accepts this as his own damn fault; he really should have tried to hide the true identity of his most-famous-in-real-life character, even if he hadn't known at the time what hearing the name 'Charlie Trout' so often was going to do to him.

But it's the discussions of Claire that get to him the most, not unexpectedly. She had after all turned out to be the emotional center of his book. Even now, he could remember how it felt when he started exploring her struggles, moving away from Sabrina's light into Claire's depths, his mind's eye adjusting to the twilight. It was her he ended up feeling most connected to, and so it is her character's journey that resonates most with these illustrious readers.

And it kills him to talk about or listen to or think about, because no matter what Serena says about falling in love with Claire, not Blair, he knows they're the same person, from the label-whoring package of girly evil to the desperate daughter to the brilliant historian to the jealous friend to the witty debater to the only-ever-picture-perfect princess to the happy schemer. He knows her.

He loves her.

But he had thought she loved him, so he guesses he didn't know everything.

* * *

Author's Note Part II: I don't expect this story to be long, but just to be clear, it's not a Dair-reunion fic, nor a living-well-is-the-best-revenge fic. I'm first and foremost a Blair fan, so there will be no Blair-bashing either. It's just my take on these three characters after the season finale, which I think showed with the screenful of emails that Blair didn't just blithely run off to be with Chuck, and Chuck didn't immediately fall down at her feet (although maybe it just took him a minute). So that's what this is, if anyone needed to be warned.

Also, it would be nice if people reviewed, but I'm a total lurker, so it's pretty hypocritical of me to ask.


	3. Chuck

Author's Note: Still don't own anything. And thanks to those who favorited and alerted. As of 45 minutes ago, it's my birthday - feel free to leave a review as my present!

* * *

They're at the tables again, he and Jack. Blair joins them after an hour in a shimmering gold Herve Leger that is tighter than her usual and makes him tense with the apparently endless want he has for her, anger for her using that desire against him, and pain that she feels she needs to.

They haven't gotten back together (the 'yet' always lingers in his mind), but she's been there on and off for two weeks, spending some days in Paris working with her mother, and the rest of the time in Monaco with him. (And every Euro he wins brings a satisfaction he can't express, even though it's not like it comes directly out of the royal family's pocket.)

When she's gone, it gives him space to breathe, and he's glad of it. Then he thinks how bad a sign that is for their relationship, that wanting her with him all the time would indicate a truer love. But then he remembers the desperate possession he felt when he was losing her the very first time, back to Nate, and again after the hotel debacle, and tells himself that he definitely doesn't want that feeling back.

Besides, he knows it's good for her. When they dine together, she tells him about the search for the new designer, learning what few parts of the business she hadn't learned cold years ago to connect to her mother, and how she'd like to expand the brand in the future. She seems animated in a way he hasn't seen her in a while, and that makes him happy.

But that's only when they're discussing Waldorf Designs. When he's talking about his plans, she smiles at him and adds her perspective on his planned takeover, but he learned to match her eyes and lips during a period of surreptitious warfare in sixth grade (before they agreed to share custody of Nate on the weekend), and they could belong to two totally different faces right now.

He doesn't yet know what her deceit means, though, and has become afraid to ask. If it's his working with Jack, he understands. It's only the thought of his own crimes, and the mercy he received from those he sinned against, that have allowed a measure of forgiveness between them—enough for them to occasionally join, as now, against a common foe.

But if she actually wants him to stop trying to reclaim what he worked so hard to keep together under circumstances that would cause most 19-year-olds to give up after a week, well, that's just not going to happen. He's glad she's building her own future, but he doesn't want either of them to play the wife anymore.

He just wishes she would tell him what's wrong.

* * *

Author's Response to Anonymous Reviewer: Thank you for reviewing, kaia, but I respectfully disagree. While Blair should have broken up with Dan before telling Chuck she wanted to be with him, that doesn't mean she isn't aware she hurt Dan, and doesn't mean she doesn't feel badly about that. Else why would she be trying to contact him so much? That's what I was basing my fic on. Also, your opinions are just fine, you don't need to say they're the opinions of many to make them more valid. I don't work at Gossip Girl, so I don't care what large portions of fandom think (besides, I never believe anyone who says that sort of thing without a statistically relevant random sampling poll to back them up). I care about my opinion, and yours, as you took the time to share it with me.


	4. BlairChuckDan

I completely lost inspiration for this, but I hate to leave things unfinished, and I didn't want to leave it until after Season 6 started (the end - sob). So I just sat down and wrote, and ended up with the following. (I was going to try for all talking, since I had them not talking previously, but couldn't do it.) Hope everyone follows the skipping scenes - they should be pretty clear.

Not mine.

Please review!

* * *

"We need to talk."

"The worst words in the English language. Really, why does anyone say them anymore? There are so many less threatening ways to start a conversation. It's really probably just better to start whatever conversation you're trying to open than..."

"Blair."

A pause before she slumps.

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"No, I'm trying to get back together with you."

"Really?" She beams.

"But I want to restart on the right foot. Blair, I want this to be our last time reuniting. I'm not saying if it doesn't work we can never try again, but I don't want to have to. Can you understand that?"

"Of course."

"So we agree?" She nods. "Then we need to talk."

* * *

He finds her at the loft. She's made herself comfortable while he was out.

"Is this really what you think of me?"

And she's also apparently read his new book.

He considers turning around and walking back out, but it's past time for him to get this over with.

"Did I get something wrong? I tried to be as accurate as memory allowed." And her crocodile tears aren't going to sway him, either.

But he should have known she wouldn't try for sympathy as she lifted her chin and stared him down. "No. You have all my actions perfectly described."

And he can't stop himself from asking. "Then which of those actions would you like to change?" He silently dares her to say how she left him. He wants to force her to say it. He wants to fight.

Say it, he urges. Say it.

* * *

They walk together slowly, with a minimum of small talk.

"How's Serena?"

"Perfect, of course. Just beginning to babble and cries at the sight of flannel." At a questioning look, he amends "On those rare occasions someone is wearing it in our neighborhood for her to see."

"And the boys?"

"Doing well. Aiden's started preschool, and Bart is continuing his reign at St. Jude's. How's the next book?"

"Don't ask. Ever since the movie, they want me to retread old ground. Boring. I'm thinking of getting away for a while."

"Feeling the urge to collect another wife, Humphrey? Never would have thought you'd be the multiple-marrier in our little group."

"Not all of us are as blessed as you were, Chuck."

"Blessed. Yes. I try to remember that."

Then they start up an incline and forgo speech in favor of breath.

* * *

"I want to know what's bothering you."

"I...What do you mean?"

He wants to sigh in exasperation, but she seems honestly confused. "About us. Beyond our not having gotten back together before now. Something's been wrong, and I know it's not your work. It could be Serena if you weren't so assiduously avoiding talking, and I'm guessing thinking, about her. Unless it's Dan?"

"No," she hastened to reassure him. "He's still ignoring me, of course - and again, I appreciate your accepting my calling him so graciously..."

"It's not that hard when he doesn't pick up."

She barely winces, but that's a sore spot between them that is well-known, and he wants to hear about what he's missing.

"But there's nothing going on there that you don't know about already."

"Then it's something to do with us."

"No. It's something to do with you."

* * *

He's surprised when she bursts into laughter, and stays stunned for the next minute while she completely loses it there on his couch.

He clenches his jaw. "It's a fair question."

She looks at him a bit more, studies his tension, and realizes how very serious he is. "Everything, Dan. I would change everything except the end."

"Well, I'm not surprised the end justifies the means in your mind."

"What would you have me do, Dan? After all, I'm one of your characters, aren't I?"

He knows she's being arch, but answers honestly anyway. "I'd have you stay with the man who loved you. Who put up with your shit, who helped you, who tried to keep you from feeling insecure, who didn't hurt you every ten minutes."

"You'd have me stay with the man I owed."

"That's not what I meant!"

"It's what you said. And what you wrote." She gestures to the manuscript on the table.

He looks away, a little ashamed to know she isn't 100% wrong. 95%, maybe. "I know you owed me more than what I got. For common politeness's sake, if nothing else."

And now she looks down, because he is completely right. "Yes. I owed you more than that. And I hope one day you'll forgive me for it."

He wants to say something cutting, but just a few minutes face-to-face with her and the anger he's kept alive all summer seems to have deserted him, and his voice follows it.

* * *

He breathes in and out slowly. "Yes?"

"Please, Chuck." She lays her hand on the side of his face, and he forces himself to relax and listen. "I worry about your plans for Bass Industries and your father. I promise, if it's really what you want, I'll be with you the whole way and never bring this up again. But is it truly what you want?"

"Blair, he dismissed me from the company like I was nothing."

"I know that. And I know, better than he does, how much you did to save Bass while he was playing dead. It's just...I'm not sure you're in this for any reason other than to prove to him you can. To best him. Where are _you_ in this?"

"It's my company, that's where I am. I didn't have it for very long, but I worked hard at it."

"But did you enjoy it?"

"Enjoy...of course I enjoyed it."

Blair bit her lip, trying to convince him to at least see other choices now available to him. "I know you enjoyed some of it Chuck. I know you love being in the hospitality business - you're amazing with clubs and hotels and parties and any kind of spectacle. But the rest of it always seemed like a chore to you. Did you really like all of it, or was it just what you had to do because your father left it to you?"

Her words reach him, and he can't answer. "I don't know Blair. But I do know I can't go through my life feeling like a failure, and I'm afraid the only way that's ever going to stop is by beating him."

"It's not the only way."

"You have a plan?"

"No, I have faith. I told you once you were becoming a man in a way your father never was, and it's so apparent now that you are that man. You are so much more than him Chuck. You don't have to beat him in business. You don't have to beat him at all. You just have to be beyond him. You just have to step forward, and you're already there."

"Then, hypothetically, what would you suggest I do next?"

She laughs a little at his phrasing, but knows he's convinced.

"Well, you won a nice stake to start yourself off. And the Empire hasn't been doing as well without you, maybe it's devalued enough for Bart to want to sell?"

"Keeping track, are you?"

"I might have checked some of the reports you'd commissioned for your takeover plans. So, I was thinking Charles Industries?"

"That's a horrible name."

"Well, it's your company, I wouldn't want to make any decisions for you."

He laughs at her obvious lie. "I'll give it some thought."

* * *

He sits on the other end of the couch. "So, are we done? Because you've sort of apologized, and I'd like to get drunk now."

"Not quite yet, Humphrey. The book."

"Ah, so it's time for some threats, is it?"

"No. Just a question. Is it going to be published?"

"So you're not going to threaten me, you're just going to stop me?"

"Again, no. I'm just trying to figure out if this was you working through your anger or if this really is your next outing."

He sticks his chin out, defiant. "It is."

And she knows she should be delicate, or silent if she can't manage that. "It shouldn't be."

"Not your business. Not anymore."

"I know."

"Then go home."

"I can't."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because you put up with my shit, helped me, kept me from feeling insecure, and didn't hurt me. Because you loved me, and I still have hope that one day you'll believe that I loved you too."

"That would mean more if I weren't being blinded by the rings on your finger."

And she is cruel and kind and honest. "I didn't say I loved you most."

He shakes it off. It is easier to have this conversation than it was to imagine it all summer. "Then finish. And then go home."

"Do you remember when Serena took over my mother's photo shoot?"

"Of course. It was the first time I thought you might actually be human."

"Yes. The first time I thought you might be worthwhile as well. So you remember sitting with me, talking about your mom?"

"Is your point that I should write about my own family and leave you alone?"

"No, my point is that you saw me. You looked past my attitude and saw me, the same way you saw what was true about Serena and Chuck and Nate. You looked deeper than any of the society masks or gossip, deeper than anyone else ever bothers to. You saw inside us, Humphrey. You know that."

And he knows what she'll say next, because he knows it's what everyone who's read his latest work, all the writers in Italy and Alessandra and even his dad, have been trying to tell him for months. "Yeah. I know."

"Then why are you writing that?" She points at it on the coffee table, and he can't defend himself. "It's so shallow, Humphrey. You're so much better than that."

There's nothing to say to that, so he rises, picks up the pages, and tosses them in the trash. She's standing when he turns around.

"Well, I'd make you burn them, but there's too much polyester here. Can't have the loft go up in flames."

"Yeah, I need someplace to write."

The smiles they send each other are small and brief, but real.

He escorts her to the door. "You're still a crazy bitch, Waldorf. But you're right."

"Of course I am. I'm Blair Bass."

He doesn't know why he's surprised. "So. That's your happy ending then."

"It is. Missing some parts, though. There's a vaguely Humphrey-shaped hole."

"I make no promises."

"But you'll think about it?"

"I'll think about it."

* * *

"So is that it?"

"For the fighting portion of the evening? I certainly hope so. I could move onto the making up."

"No, I mean of what you wanted to talk about. Since we were talking before we got back together and all."

He smiles at her. "Yes, my concerns have been thoroughly discussed."

She looks gleeful. "And we're back together? Officially?"

He begins to say 'absolutely' and then stops to think. "Well, not entirely offically yet."

And her pout is so pretty, but he's not kissing it off her without one more minute of seriousness. "I want a promise, Blair." She looks quizzical. "Your thoughts on my plan were helpful. Your insights were correct. But you didn't share any of them until I pushed you."

"I didn't want to add to your burden while it's already so heavy."

"But you didn't. So you have to promise to talk to me."

She settles against him. "As long as it goes both ways."

"Okay. And no scheming either. For real this time. We're a team."

"I promise to never go behind your back, and only use my deviousness in service of a mutually agreed-upon cause, as long as you do."

"I promise to only scheme with you, never against, unless in furtherance of a surprise present."

"Loopholes already?" She narrows her eyes.

"Just the one. What else do you want?"

"Support when I'm feeling less than myself." He looks down at her, surprised. She forestalls his objection. "I can admit I need it sometimes. But real support, Chuck. Not fake photographers to make me feel confident."

"Then I promise to support you without resorting to tricks."

"And I promise to look to you when I need help."

"I promise to try to stop letting my dad drive me crazy."

"I promise the same with my mom."

"I promise to be honest with you."

"As do I. And I promise to keep you in jewelry and peonies."

She closes her eyes and rubs noses with him. "Uh-uh. Keep me in love."

"I...I could keep you in sickness and in health?"

She opens them again, to see a look of determination. "Really?"

"Well, we've been doing pretty well at writing vows for the past few minutes, don't you think?"

And her smile is trembling, and her eyes are tearing, but she is so far beyond happiness at this moment that she thinks she'll just have to spend the rest of her life there. "Yeah, I think we have."

* * *

They crest the hill at the same time, neither winning the slow race they wouldn't have admitted to being in. Chuck lays a stargazer lily on Lily's grave, who technically finished her life as a Bass - who would have thought her marriage to his father would have been her last? - but decided after his death to use her birth name and be only herself from then on. So, despite numerous affairs, culminating with one last long relationship with Rufus Humphrey, she was buried a Rhodes.

Dan, after a moment, goes to visit Serena. There are fresh flowers there already - Carter Baizen had been in town recently, and Ben lived in New York, or Eric or Nate might have been by, or maybe it was someone else. Men their age always seemed to get maudlin about the most beautiful girl in the world whom no man could tame, or some other romantic notion.

Dan only ever saw tragedy. She never quite managed to find her footing for more than a year or two at a time, and they all got used to her frequent entrances and exits from their lives until the last one many years ago.

Chuck rises and they continue, keeping pace on purpose now. Blair's grave is pristine white, not far from the girl she loved first and best for so many years. Dan doesn't stay long. Can't really, at least not today. Her children, Charles Jr. and Audrey, never come on the anniversary of her death, just her husband and her best friend. Dan knows the other man takes some comfort in their young grandchildren, only two of whom Blair had lived long enough to meet, but thinks it is probably not enough.

But he hopes he's wrong. After all, he and Chuck are friends.

Sort of.

* * *

Yeah, not totally what I intended. Too rushed, but it kind of got my point across (I hope). Thank you for reading! Would love some feedback!


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